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Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

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Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#31

Few stories make me as happy as this one did. Thank you OP. Hopefully in the future I can enjoy a beef-steak guilt-free! The cow methane problem is one that literally keeps me up at night. I kept thinking about my inevitable switch to chicken and missing out on a tenderloin.. and how my kids won't be able to eat like me.

> Hopefully in the future I can enjoy a beef-steak guilt-free!

Good luck with that! Vegans then will "move the goalposts" and attack you for ethhical/morality reasons.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#32
post #16

How is that the article’s title and did any of the comments on seaweed read the article? It was the experiment with red algae, not the seaweed experiments that “reduces methane emissions almost entirely”. > Kinley and De Nys tested 20 different species of seaweed on bacteria found in the stomachs of cows. They discovered seaweed reduced methane production by up to 50 percent, depending on the amount administered. But…

Most seaweed (65%) are red algae.[0]

0) http://www.seaweed.ie/algae/rhodophyta.php

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#33
For a moment this was the best news I had read in years, until I noticed the story is a year old and the research paper[1] is two years old. Hopefully there has been some progress in the past years but if that were the case we would should have seen another headline by now. At least I haven't.

Normally 2 years wouldn't be much time to go from a research paper to production. But this appears to be a simple solution to an urgent problem so it's hard to be patient.

[1] https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/43225/

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that racist? Just being only relevant to one race doesn't make it racist.

its a stereotype. not only japanese people eat seaweed

No, stereotyping would apply some assumptions to an individual based on his group. This on the other hand is a plausible statistical claim.

Some stereotypes are based on loud minorities, but others manifest due to the it being true on a statistically meaningful scale. I think it is safe to say on average Japanese have more seaweed in their diet. So if I met a random Japanese person and assume they eat seaweed, then I am stereotyping, but it is rational and informed stereotyping, nothing rude about it.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#35
post #6

I recently heard about Russian cosmonauts eating a lot of dill to counteract farting. It's apparently called a carminative, and seaweed is a carminative too.

Interesting, but I believe that methane emissions from cows are burps rather than farts, and there's a lot more fermentation going on in a cow's rumen than in our guts, so there might be some other mechanism at play here. Or perhaps not.

OTOH, aren't farts just unreleased burps that passed into the intestines.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#36
With an ag background I've been following this story for a long time. It has excited enough interest in America that trials are underway, I believe off the coast of Maine to grow red algae but I can't find the link.

But they've already had luck growing red algae off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Molokai. I've been to Molokai and although there's a lot of farmland there it's laying idle. Most of the land was used previously by Dole I believe to raise pineapple's.

I was scheming with some fellow agronomists at the time what we could grow profitably. Most of the former workers commute presently to Maui and work in the hotels. It would be hilarious to me if the entire farming industry ended up taking place off the coast.

https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/side-algae-hawaiian-farmers...

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#37
post #23
post #14

Can this study be done with the cow feed just being plain old grass? There’s lots of anecdotal evidence showing grass fed cows don’t produce much methane, thereby making pasture raised meat environmentally friendly. Yet there doesn’t appear to be many studies on it for whatever reason. Everything is focused on corn-based cow feed.

I believe grass fed cattle produce more methane actually.

Source?

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#38
Unfortunately, there are fishermen that are no longer able to make a living because they have depleted the fish in the area they fish, so now they are looking for a new way to make a living. Farming seaweed seems to be a possible alternative to fishing. We'll be seeing a lot more stories about how great seaweed is as the industry starts to make a market for it.

Feeding cattle grass will reduce the methane just as much as seaweed, I bet. The problem is that the majority of cows are fed a diet of corn, which is cheap relative to grass, which does not appeal to their digestive system so therefore we get a lot of methane out of the whole process. What I see here is somebody trying to sell seaweed as an additive. But the reality is that if you fed cows the proper feed, grass, then we wouldn't have the big problem with methane.

Edit- Update, seems like grass is a bigger methane producer when digested by cows. The problem is the pollution created to produce and transport the corn. I was going by old info.

Here's a link.

http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef-gre...

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#39
post #36

With an ag background I've been following this story for a long time. It has excited enough interest in America that trials are underway, I believe off the coast of Maine to grow red algae but I can't find the link. But they've already had luck growing red algae off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Molokai. I've been to Molokai and although there's a lot of farmland there it's laying idle. Most of the land was use…

Did Molokai farming end because of soil depletion, or ...?

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#40
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, but I believe that methane emissions from cows are burps rather than farts, and there's a lot more fermentation going on in a cow's rumen than in our guts, so there might be some other mechanism at play here. Or perhaps not.

OTOH, aren't farts just unreleased burps that passed into the intestines.

I think in humans burps are a release of swallowed air, while farts are gasses produced by fermentation in the intestines. Ruminants OTOH have a fermentation chamber (rumen) as the first part of their digestive system (their first 'stomach'). Other animals have different fermentation strategies.
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